Finally finished the draft cover for Capes (barring a few little additions and modifications I know still need to be done in the title-bar). And I am now absolutely too close to it to give anything like a rational appraisal any more.

So how's it look, folks? Any particular parts where you'd do something differently?

Heh... Sharks with lasers on their heads. Might need to color the water they're in more blue so they don't look like landsharks with lasers on their heads, though: At first I thought they were burrowing upwards through the floor (which, if the intent, is okay, too...).

LOL on the lasersharks, ditto on the blue water, though.

Personally, I'm not thrilled with the protagonist being a 'kid', but that's just me.

Captures the mood pretty well, I think!

Okay, I've got a worry about the blue water. Specifically, tossing in even a tiny little bit of color outside the warm monochrome palette of the rest of the background seems (to my eyes) to reduce the amount that the colored pieces of the composition jump out and smack the viewer in the face.

Am I worrying over nothing?

As for the youth of the protagonist... wholly unintentional. In fact, even having been told that you see it that way I'm having trouble adjusting my perception... big old eye-areas in domino masks don't convey the same thing to me, I guess, due to years of indoctrination. But I'll see what I can do.

TonyLB wrote: tossing in even a tiny little bit of color outside the warm monochrome palette of the rest of the background seems (to my eyes) to reduce the amount that the colored pieces of the composition jump out and smack the viewer in the face.

TonyLB wrote: As for the youth of the protagonist... wholly unintentional.... But I'll see what I can do.

TonyLB wrote: As for the youth of the protagonist... wholly unintentional. In fact, even having been told that you see it that way I'm having trouble adjusting my perception... big old eye-areas in domino masks don't convey the same thing to me, I guess, due to years of indoctrination.

TonyLB,

It's the size of the head on the character that makes it look young.
People's head become as smaller percentage of their body as they grow up. The features are youthful also, but that doesn't bother me.

For a test, try shrinking it 25%.

Fun cover. Love the shark.

Gary

I like the cover. As for the laser shark, I didn't interpret it as coming out of the floor. On the other hand, you've already got the red laser on the shark (which is what made me notice it in the first place), so you might as well make the water blue.

The hero sure looks like a kid to me, though I didn't view that as a negative.

Thanks for all the advice! It's really incredibly valuable to me to have folks who can come at this with a fresh eye.

I know that blue water wouldn't overbalance the composition. But it would draw attention to the water, and frankly... well, the water's boring. The dangling love interest and the red laser, they're fun. I don't mind people's eyes lingering on them.

I have tried another in my bag of dirty tricks, keeping the palette mostly the same, but adding water-rippled reflections of the foreground elements. And I think I've added about ten years to the face of the hero.

Newest draft is here. Improvement?

Grey-but-reflective works for the water (nicely done, that).

And the hero is a little older. But stubble, dammit, stubble!

The water looks more like water, now, which is good. The hero looks exactly the same to me. I'm by no means an artistic person, but I can't even tell what is different.

I like the drawing, but I don't think it suits the game very well. This cover says "happy-go-lucky slugfest with tongue in cheek." The game itself (as I understand it) is an engine for much more ambitious sorts of play with the potential for a lot more depth and meaning than the cartoon cover suggests.

This cover doesn't say "Sure, power is fun. But do you deserve it?"

For the water, I definitely think it needs to be blue, but what if you go with a very pale blue/cyan? Or a steel grey perhaps? It doesn't have to be a bright or saturated color like the rest of them are. It would make the sharks stand out better too (I noticed a red thing there initially, but had to look harder to find a shark attached to it).

I also see the hero as being very young, and I also think this is due to the head size - his head is as wide as his shoulders. You might get away with this on a female character (using breasts and hips to show some age at least), but on a male adult, the shoulders just have to be wider relative to the head. Using another comparison, the head is the same size as his entire chest. (But the tied up woman's head is also as big as her chest, but we can see enough of her hips to know that she's got to at least be out of jr. jigh school).

Now, the impression this cover gives me is that you've got a tongue in cheek parody of comics going on here, sort of doing for comics what Paranoia did for nuclear holocaust. It also strikes me as a game I should buy for kids in the 10-13 range (perhaps because the comics I collected through jr and sr high were much darker and more realistic). Is this the right impression?

I have several unrelated thoughts about this.

For my part, I like the shark and girl in draft 2 the best out of those three - in 3 it seems like they are impinging on the action and drawing too must attention to themselves.

As for the hero's head...3 is slightly more adult than 1, but I would consider a different expression, if you aren't going to muck around with comic proportion (aren't superhero shoulders usually between three and four heads wide?), because that smirk is really taking the years off. I'm accustomed to seeing American comic adults having squared-off, angular features and small heads (check this guy... http://www.collectingfool.com/unpublished/barnett-captamerica.jpg ), so the hero here reads as "manga kid" to me, especially as large heads are pretty common in the Japanese style, and the hanging woman reads as "big-headed manga chick" to me, also.

I don't know how you could do this, but maybe by introducing some depth between the robot and the hero--indicating that he is much farther away from us than it is--it would make us reinterpret his scale, making him seem bigger than the robot, rather than much smaller.

I agree with Justin, the impression I get of the game from the cover is different from the impression I get of the game from the design (which admittedly, I've not been keeping up with) - it's very "punch, kick, save the girl!" rather than "Power is fun but do you deserve it?" - although how you would convey that through a cover, I'm afraid I don't know.

"Power is fun, but do you deserve it?" - cover:

The hero stands triumphantly on the trodden-down robot, bulbs flashing, camera's at the ready from reporters. In the back, in an alley behind recognizable Hero HeadQuarters (similarities between logo on building and hero costume), some homeless people starve from the cold (burning scraps in a barrel for warmth).

There's one example.

On Manga: Yep, I've got a lot of manga in my artistic roots, and it comes out all over. Also, it sells well in a lot of demographics, and doesn't sell poorly in... well, basically anything. So for the sake of commercialism I think I'm going to stick with it. It is only representing one possible visual ouevre you could bring to the share imaginary space, but that's sort of a necessity.


On Cover and Premise: Wow, you guys are grim! Homeless people starving in the alleyways? Yeeesh!

I'm getting the impression that folks assume a game can either be filled with childish glee or address serious Premise, but not both. But that's just not true. It's no more true than the idea that you can either roll dice or tell a story. All of these things are in the "two great tastes that taste great together" category.

So yes, the game is "Punch, kick, save the girl!" It is also and at the same time "Doubt, brood, question my worth." If the cover is getting across the games unabashed adoration of its cheesy, four-color, silver-age source material then I'm happy. If it doesn't get across the potential for deep introspection? Ah well... I've got a whole 'nother cover around on the back of the book.

TonyLB wrote:
I'm getting the impression that folks assume a game can either be filled with childish glee or address serious Premise, but not both. But that's just not true. It's no more true than the idea that you can either roll dice or tell a story. All of these things are in the "two great tastes that taste great together" category.

So yes, the game is "Punch, kick, save the girl!" It is also and at the same time "Doubt, brood, question my worth." If the cover is getting across the games unabashed adoration of its cheesy, four-color, silver-age source material then I'm happy. If it doesn't get across the potential for deep introspection? Ah well... I've got a whole 'nother cover around on the back of the book.

Fair enough. I don't know what sells games. (EDIT: I don't know, in fact, that anyone really does...)

Sorry to get all defensive... the marketing side of this makes my brain hurt and my skin itch. Which is, you know, totally not anyone's fault but my own, but still.

Jack Aidley wrote: ::snip:: "Power is fun but do you deserve it?" - although how you would convey that through a cover, I'm afraid I don't know.

I don't know what sells games, either, Tony. For Capes, I think a lot of its appeal is that it isn't just another supers game. This cover is just another supers cover, though. The system and design of Capes is special. It would be nice if the cover conveyed the idea that the material inside the book is not the same old stuff that's been done with the genre before.

John Harper wrote: I don't know what sells games, either, Tony. For Capes, I think a lot of its appeal is that it isn't just another supers game. This cover is just another supers cover, though. The system and design of Capes is special. It would be nice if the cover conveyed the idea that the material inside the book is not the same old stuff that's been done with the genre before.

Okay, the advice from here has been preying on my mind. So here's my first thought at a solution: This wrap-around cover. The way I figure it, at conventions (at least) I can control which side gets displayed facing up, and adjust based on crowd. Plus, it makes it fun for anyone who picks up the book to look at the back.

Have I gone off the deep end here? It seems, in my sleep-dep-addled state like there are two distinct messages (if you simplify the one message down to "get it across on a cover" mode) that need to be gotten across, and two distinct sides of the book.